Goal: Protect our rivers, lakes, streams and other waterways by uniting over 250 local and regional groups so they can be more effective clean water champions.

The people who take action to clean up and protect our rivers, lakes and streams need all the help they can get. Since 2014, our Clean Water Network has connected these local heroes with each other, uniting more than 250 local and regional watershed groups around the country so they can be more effective champions for clean water.

In fact, America’s waterways only started to get cleaner when the people who lived near them began seeing them as places to cherish and protect, not exploit, and began to come together and act on their behalf. Today, those local heroes need all the help they can get.

More than 250 members strong

That’s why the Clean Water Network project exists. We connect local clean water groups (often known as watershed groups) with each other, so they can share ideas and resources, and more easily access organizing and other forms of expertise. When necessary, we help them band together to take on bigger challenges.

We know this approach is right because it’s already working. The most effective watershed groups in the country today have the most robust connections with other watershed groups.

From Healing Our Waters in the Great Lakes to Choose Clean Water in the Chesapeake Bay, these groups have built deep networks of coordinated support. These coalitions have demonstrably improved water quality over the past decade. The more waterkeepers and other watershed advocates join the network, the more effective all of us become.

From workshops to fly-ins

We are uniquely positioned to provide that support to these efforts.

We’ve coordinated the Clean Water Network since 2014, and we draw upon more than 40 years of grassroots action and advocacy on clean water and other issues. We run workshops to help local and regional groups become more effective advocates for the waters they care about. We also connect the newer groups within the network with the more advanced, so they can share best practices and resources.

Because members see firsthand how water pollution affects real people and their communities, the Clean Water Network organized a member fly-in event to D.C. to give our local groups a chance to meet the EPA administrators responsible for their regions. We coordinated briefings with the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers and facilitated strategy meetings to ensure that our member groups left with the knowledge and skills necessary to win back home.

An important time

It’s always an important time to protect clean water. But given current moves to weaken federal clean water protections, we need local citizens and groups to be as effective as possible in standing up for the waters that all of us care about.

Keeping our water clean is a responsibility that passes from one generation to the next. A stronger Clean Water Network will help ensure that our nation’s waterways will continue to have watchdogs, advocates and champions for decades to come.